


When Your Heart Beats Next to Mine

by beethechange



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rimming, Seriously It's Just 10k of Banging and Jokes Here Folks, Threesome - M/M/M, Virginity Kink, Virginity Roleplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 11:37:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18387674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beethechange/pseuds/beethechange
Summary: Then Ryan must remember what he’s supposed to be doing, because when he comes back for more it’s soft, exploratory, much less certain. More like a virgin might kiss, not that Shane’s got that much experience kissing virgins.Shane pulls back and watches with fierce joy as Ryan puts on the whole routine: big eyes, gulping, passing his hand over his mouth like he’s already overwhelmed just from a kiss.“Okay, time out again,” Curly says. “This is exactly how I imagined this trip going when I put it on my vision board.”***Or: Ryan and Shane have unfinished business. Curly sees them through the wilderness. (It’s a sex wilderness.)





	When Your Heart Beats Next to Mine

**Author's Note:**

> Set during and after this week’s bonus Supernatural ep “The Hunt for La Llorona – The Weeping Woman.” A tip of the hat to ol’ Ryan Steven Bergara for this prompt. 
> 
> This fic is a work of obvious and extreme fiction. If you’re in the tags, don’t read it! THIS MEANS YOU CURLY. Please don’t be the Pete Wentz of this fandom. I can see you thinking about it and I'm b e g g i n g. 
> 
> In this fic I’ve tried to treat the concept of virginity with the seriousness I feel it deserves, which is to say: almost none. It ain’t nothin’ but a word, my friends, and it has nothing to do with your worth or value. Bang, don’t bang, whatever. You’re valid. 
> 
> Thanks to Catt for the beta!

*

**_Ryan._ **

Ryan doesn’t know what makes him say it.

Actually, he’s pretty sure that Curly’s presence on tonight’s shoot is what makes him say it. There’s something about Curly’s frank, unabashed interest that makes Ryan want to encourage it. It emboldens Ryan to make jokes he wouldn’t usually make, just because he knows the reaction will be good—good, and different from the usual low laugh and change of subject he’d get from Shane alone.

It used to make Ryan uncomfortable, the undeniably desirous way Curly looked at him, the suggestive things he would say with a sly smile. Now, if Ryan’s being honest, he actively seeks it out.

Or, put another way: sometimes when Curly flirts, Ryan flirts back. Just to see what will happen next.  

Ostensibly they’re searching for La Llorona. Nobody, including Ryan, thinks they’ll actually find her by a tiny swing set in a park in New Mexico, but they got the Warner Bros. sponsorship so they’ll do what they have to do to earn it.

“It’s kind of funny when you see these places and you know, oh, this is where I’m gonna lose it later,” Ryan says, even though there’s little chance of him losing his cool here. He’s just trying to lend a little bit of dramatic tension to a park that’s self-evidently _not_ haunted by the tortured souls of any weeping infanticidal women.

“Your virginity?” Shane asks with a crooked smile. It’s the laziest, easiest, most literal joke in the world, and it’s going to get cut anyway, and Curly is there, so Ryan goes with it.

“Yeah, my virginity,” he agrees. “Which reminds me, I have something to tell you guys. I was hoping—I had some very special plans for this evening.”

Shane laughs in surprise, half a cough. Curly giggles and turns to look at him.

“What, right here in the park? Right under the bridge? _¡Qué impactante!_ I accept.”

“I think every guy dreams it’ll happen this way,” Ryan says, adopting a hazy, wistful tone. “Pushing thirty, under a gross bridge in a public park at ten at night, with two of his coworkers. On camera.”  

“While some ghost lady wails in the background about the kids she drowned,” Shane contributes. “Good for you, holding out for something special.”

They laugh some more. When they get to the swings, where they’re going to film their next bit, Curly turns to shoot Ryan a speculative look. “I bet we’d show you a good time,” he says. “I bet our tall friend here knows what you like.”

He smiles big like it’s part of the joke, licks his lips—Ryan catches the glint of his white teeth in the dark, hears Shane’s uncertain cackle again in the periphery—but when he pulls his flashlight up to Curly’s face there’s something there that tells Ryan he’s thinking about it. That he wants Ryan to _know_ he’s thinking about it. That he’ll think about it again later, alone in his hotel room, in bed or in the shower, and he wants Ryan to know that too.

Ryan wants to say something back, but he has no earthly idea what to say. He can feel Shane off his left shoulder, waiting for Ryan’s reaction to inform how he in turn reacts. To Curly, who’s new to their shoots, they must seem like a unit, like one machine operating seamlessly in two parts. Ryan kind of gets why Curly would say that, _I bet he knows what you like_ , and he feels himself flushing at the kernel of truth that lives there.

“Maybe,” he says eventually, which isn’t—it’s not what he _meant_ to say, surely. Curly cocks his head, registering the strangeness. Shane steps up even with Ryan’s elbow, but he doesn’t touch him.

“Buttery popcorn. Horror movies. Animated bears, but not real ones. A good deep dicking under crumbling urban infrastructure—”

“Jesus Christ, Shane.”

“These are a few of Ryan Bergara’s favorite things.”

Curly’s bent double at the waist, howling with laughter, and the tension’s broken. “Are all the outtakes from your show like this? Is this why you don’t release bloopers? Is it because they would light the internet on fire with their raw sexual energy?”

“No,” Ryan glowers.

“Whatever you say, _querido_ ,” Curly says. He mutters something else in Spanish under his breath that Ryan can’t translate, which is probably for the best.

Matt starts to set up for a longer stationary shot. Shane keeps looking at him, searching and wary, and unless Ryan’s very much mistaken there _is_ something raw there. A nerve touched, an interest piqued. Something that was pushed down struggling to the surface.

Ryan wonders what he’s started—or, more accurately, what he might finally be in a position to finish.

*

Later that night they find a bar in downtown Las Cruces. It’s just a dive bar that’s switching off between bad country music and bad seventies music; sticky floors and barn doors to the bathroom and UFC fight night on the big screen. The patrons are a strange mix of students, bikers, and old guys with leathery suntanned skin and loads of wrinkles around the eyes.

Some of the crew have gone straight the hotel, but it’s an early night by Unsolved shooting standards, not yet eleven, and they don’t have an early flight tomorrow. Ryan’s eager to wind down over a beer. This particular shoot wasn’t scary, but he’s still amped up and energized, hyper-alert in some unspecific way that’s translating into tapping fingers and unsettled feet.

Shane’s at the bar trying to catch the bartender’s attention. Curly goes up behind him, puts one hand on Shane’s shoulder as he waves a twenty in his other.

He’s been doing that a lot this week, Ryan’s noticed. Touching Shane at the shoulder, at the hip. A hand on his knee in the rental car. He knows he’ll see it all over the footage when he goes back and watches.

It’s not that Ryan is jealous. Curly’s a touchy guy, that’s nothing new. He’s free to touch whomever he likes, it’s not, it isn’t a _thing_. It’s not like Shane’s objecting, so who is Ryan to object for him?

It’s just a different vibe than he’s used to. He and Shane are deliberate about preserving personal space, and he always thought Shane wanted it that way. Now Ryan wonders if it’s been him all along, if there’s something about _him_ that radiates don’t-touch-me energy and Shane’s responded in kind.

Except for that one time.

Ryan takes his denim jacket off. He’s wearing a hoodie under it, and he takes that off too, arranging it around the back of his chair. That leaves him with just black jeans and a black t-shirt, tight around the arms, and if Ryan nudges the arms up a little to let more bicep peek out, well, prove it.

Katie shoots him a weird look and then heads for the jukebox, presumably to find something that isn’t country or disco.

Shane and Curly return with drinks for the table. Shane passes Ryan his and sits down next to him with a thump. Ryan waits to see where Curly will choose to sit, and he feels curiously vindicated when Curly sits at his other side instead of at Shane’s.

“Shane, dude, your hair’s totally fucked. Good grief.”

Ryan reaches out to pat it down where it’s floofing out spectacularly at the side, testing his theory. Instead of pulling back, Shane stills himself and bends his head down to give Ryan better access to smooth his fingers through it.

Curly’s watching them both with an eagle eye over the rim of his glass. He leans back in his chair, casual, comfortable. Everything he does and says and wears looks so very lived-in, so very one thousand percent himself _._ There’s just something about Curly that makes you want to look at him, that makes you want to know him better in case that confidence might rub off.

“So is this what you miscreants usually do after a shoot? Find a local watering hole?”

Curly’s eyes flick to the arms of Ryan’s t-shirt. Ryan sees him look, not like he’s trying to hide it, and resists the urge to flex at the attention. He’s nervous. He doesn’t know why he’s _nervous_.

“Usually there’s no after,” Shane says. “Sometimes we shoot ‘til three, four in the morning. We just go back to the hotel, shower off the dust and rat hair, and sleep.”

“Not much time to unwind after all that excitement,” Curly observes. “Aren’t you coming out of your skins?”  

Shane snorts. “What excitement? We sit in some dark, dirty place talking to air for about six hours, and then we talk to a radio, and then Ryan gets out his dowsing rods and runs into walls and shrieks about it. If we’re in a museum I pester Ryan about typos in the exhibit labels. We’re mostly too tired to do anything _but_ crash.”

That’s not quite true, though. There was once. There was that one time.

Another relatively early night after a giddy day, too many drinks at the hotel bar, an illicit after-hours swim in the hotel pool.

Crowding into the shower behind Shane, smelling like chlorine and beer, mumbling something about conserving water. Touching him, tentative at first, and then being pushed back against the wall of the shower until the water ran tepid and finally cold. Because fuck droughts, right?

Ryan’s never told anybody about that. He’s never even talked to _Shane_ about it. They woke up the next morning in different beds, like it never happened, and it seemed easier to pretend it hadn’t.

Except now Curly’s sitting here, nursing his soda and glancing between Ryan and Shane as if he can smell it on them. As if he has some kind of Spidey sense for top-secret sexual encounters that’s been going haywire all day.

Ryan feels very considered. He can feel Curly _considering_ him.

“Sorry if it’s not what you thought it would be,” he says. “I warned you that Unsolved shoots aren’t glamorous. I hope you had fun and you’re not, like, disappointed.”

Curly shakes his head, making his curls shake vociferously. “Ryan Bergara, you listen. Nothing you could do in that little t-shirt could disappoint me, you hear? It’s so important to me that you know that.”

“What about out of it?”

Ryan can’t help himself. He’s been dying to say something to get a reaction, and Curly graces him with a gratifyingly huge laugh. He reaches out and pets at Ryan’s bicep, giving it a loving squeeze as if it’s an old friend he’s reuniting with after an interminable winter of long-sleeved shirts.

“Not then either.”

Shane, meanwhile, has put his beer down to stare in bewilderment at the scene unfolding before him.

“What has gotten into you tonight, man?” he asks Ryan. “Do I need to leave you two alone or something? Weird. Weird vibes in here.”

“Nah,” Ryan says, swigging his beer again, raising his eyebrows at Shane in unspoken challenge. “Stay.”

At his other side Curly’s humming along with the song on the jukebox, something Ryan doesn’t recognize, summery and with a sixties swing. Shane keeps sneaking peeks at him when he thinks Ryan can’t see, confused and maybe intrigued. They don’t surprise each other all that often, and it’s sort of thrilling to have caught Shane off-guard.

Katie returns with another round, and the jukebox turns over again, and somebody suggests a game of darts, and for the moment everything’s back to normal again.

*

Ryan catches Shane a couple of beers later, on the way back from the bathroom after they’ve spectacularly lost two rounds of darts and a round of pool to Curly and Katie. He’s not drunk, but he’s had enough to be loose-lipped and loose-limbed and bold.

“Do you remember that one time? In San Diego, after Villa Montezuma?”

“Yeah, okay,” Shane says with a heavy sigh, like he’s been gearing up for this conversation all night. Maybe Ryan’s been telegraphing a particular and specific ain’t-give-a-damn attitude. “Of course I remember, Ryan. I was there.”

“Yeah, well. We just never talk about it.”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about it! The next day you kept going on about how drunk you’d been. I assumed that was code for you wanting to pretend you didn’t remember.”

“Well,” Ryan says, because that’s a fair assumption now that he thinks about it. “I do remember. Sometimes I remember a _lot_.”

“I figured it was a rebound. You were going through some stuff. Shit happens. It didn’t need to be a thing.”

“But what if I wanted it to be a thing?”

“Ryan…” Shane starts, but Curly interrupts him, coming up behind them both to sling arms around their shoulders. His eyes are shining, his own hoodie’s come off some time during the last round of pool, and there are several buttons of his grandpa-chic button-down undone at his chest to reveal abundant and energetic chest hair.

“Ryan, I’ve been meaning to tell you—” Curly grasps Ryan’s hand tightly, urgently. “There’s no shame in it. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“Thanks, I…wait, what?”

“The, you know.” He lowers his voice so only Ryan and Shane could possibly hear him. “The virgin thing. There’s nothing wrong with waiting. _No te preocupes_.”

“Wha—”

Shane’s laughing so hard it’s coming out silent. He has to lean against the dingy bar wall for purchase. Ryan feels suddenly and entirely sober, the four beers he’s had in the last hour erased by this strange non-sequitur.

“Curly, dude, that was a joke. I’m not really a virgin.”

“No, obviously, I know it was a joke,” Curly says, rolling his eyes. He looks at Ryan through his eyelashes, flirty and genuine at the same time. “I’m just saying. I’m sure the right girl will come along and treat you right soon. Or, you know, whoever. You deserve that.”  

He treads very delicately on Shane’s foot as he says _whoever_.

Shane stops laughing at once. His face goes pink and he’s upright again, looking from Curly to Ryan and back like he’s found himself caught the middle of the tennis match where only one person knows how to play tennis. His bottom lip slips between his teeth.

“Yeah, Ry,” Shane agrees after a minute. Ryan can’t believe what he’s hearing. “You don’t have to be shy about it. We’re all friends here.”

Ryan gawps openly at Shane. At Shane, who has firsthand experience of him not being a virgin, as they were literally just discussing. At Shane, who’s peering intently at Ryan like Ryan should be getting the joke by now.

“Okay, what’s happening here?” Ryan asks.

“I feel very blessed that you trust us enough to tell us,” Curly continues, as if Ryan hasn’t said anything at all. “I wonder if there’s anything Shane and I could do to make you feel better?”

Then Curly runs his thumb up the side of Ryan’s hand and wrist, the hand he’s still holding, and Ryan jumps a little at the touch and understands.

Oh. _Oh_. It’s a thing. It’s a game. It’s an opportunity and an offer.

He’s caged in by them, Shane at his side and Curly in front of him, pressing in. He can feel his pulse speeding up, which means Curly can feel it too, where he’s caught hold of Ryan’s wrist.

This, then, is a turning point. Ryan can laugh it off, go back to their table, get another beer. That path ends with him alone in bed in an hour, Shane snoring softly from the other bed a few feet away, and adding this to the list of things they never talk about.

Or.

He could play along and see what happens.

“Thanks, guys,” Ryan says, making his choice. He lets his voice break a little, lets it come out quieter than his usual conversation level. “It’s not this noble thing, it just never happened for me. Honestly, it’s kind of a burden. I’d like to just get it over with, but it feels like something I’d have to tell a person and that’s…awkward.”

Curly clucks. He pats Ryan’s cheek twice, gently.

“ _Pobrecito_. It really doesn’t have to be that big a deal. You just have to find someone you can trust to make it good for you. Somebody who knows you, hm?”

Curly’s eyes meander back to Shane. Ryan doesn’t look over, but he hears Shane’s inhale of air.

“I guess. I don’t know who would, though. Nobody wants to fuck a virgin, right? I bet I suck at it.”

“Oh, honey,” Curly says with a laugh. “Bless your tiny-t-shirt-wearing heart. Plenty of people would give their right arm to be the first to pluck that flower.”

“Maybe you’d be more comfortable having this conversation somewhere quieter, Ryan,” Shane suggests, his tone mild and feather-light. “It is kind of private. Maybe a nightcap in Curly’s room?”

None of them miss that he suggests Curly’s room. Curly’s room, with the king bed. Ryan and Shane’s room has two doubles.

“What a nice idea, Mister Shane,” Curly agrees. “There’s a mini-bar with our name on it. I won't partake, but I haven't forgotten how to make a damn good vodka-Sprite from the hotel vending machine.”

Ryan weighs it all out. There’s still a not insignificant chance that this is all a joke; just a bit of random flirtation that they’ve all let go a little too far because they’re bored and tipsy and there’s nothing else to do in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Maybe they’ll have that nightcap and then all go to sleep in their own beds.

But then again, maybe he has some very special plans for this evening after all.

*

 ** _Shane_**.

Shane sees it in Ryan’s eyes, the exact moment that the other shoe drops and he gets an inkling of what Curly’s up to, not too far behind Shane himself. His pupils go big and dark and unfocused. Shane’s seen that look once before.

“Thanks, guys,” Ryan says, and Shane hears the quaver in it. He launches into this really remarkable embarrassed virgin routine, and Shane can’t tell if he’s turned on or impressed or both: it’s a good performance, just enough of Ryan’s real self-conscious stammering, colored by a put-on gee-whiz bashfulness that isn’t like him at all.

Curly’s into it too. Shane can tell by the way he cups Ryan’s cheek almost tenderly, and then by the sweet smile he gives Shane when they make eye contact to communicate about what might happen next.

It feels weird to be doing this here, whatever _this_ is, in full view of Katie and Matt and a bunch of random New Mexicans. This crowd probably doesn’t watch much Unsolved, but then you never know.

He suggests a nightcap, Curly piles on, and Ryan accepts. And just like that it’s happening, _something’s_ happening, and Shane is clapping Matt on the back and closing out their tab and making their excuses to Katie about being tired, really, just exhausted from all that ghost-huntin’!

And then there’s a Lyft ride back to the hotel, all three of them scrunched in the backseat while their driver chain-smokes and complains to them about Donald Trump and plays “Purple Haze” six times in a row. It’s annoying, but all Shane can see is Curly’s hand resting on Ryan’s knee, playing with the denim where it’s deliberately frayed. Weaving his fingertip in and out of the threads, tugging at loose ones until they pull free.

Ryan jumps every single time Curly’s finger grazes skin. Shane genuinely can’t tell if it’s part of the virgin act or if it’s just Ryan being Ryan.

He thinks dimly how strange it is that this is all his doing, really. A dumb joke he made without thinking stuck in Curly’s head, emboldened Ryan in some mysterious way, and now here they are unfolding from the backseat of the Lyft together at midnight.

In Curly’s hotel room there’s the usual removing of outer layers, coats thrown over the impersonal desk in the corner. Ryan strips down to his t-shirt again, looking self-conscious when he catches Shane watching him pull his hoodie over his head, tugging his shirt down over the strip of bare belly.

Curly busies himself in the mini-bar, pulling out tiny, expensive bottles of vodka they’ll have to figure out how to explain to Accounting later. He disappears down the hall, and soon he’s pushing a little glass of fizzy nothing into Shane’s hand and one into Ryan’s.

He sits on the big king-sized bed cross-legged with his own sweating glass, presumably just Sprite, and pats the duvet beside him.

“Sit, Bergara.”  

Ryan perches there, sipping his mini-bar concoction. Somewhere along the way he toed out of his ghoul-hunting boots. His socked feet, crossed at the ankles in an attempt at casual, strike Shane as an effective touch, beautifully art-directed for vulnerability.

There might be too many producers in this hotel room.

“You guys look like you’re in full sleepover mode,” Shane says to lighten things a little. “We gonna play Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board? Summon Bloody Mary in the bathroom mirror?”

“No way, I don’t fuck with her,” Curly says with immediate vociferousness, like this is something that comes up in his life a lot.

Curly and Ryan look like mirror twins sitting on the bed, slight but strong, two heads of emphatic black curls. Shane can see how if Ryan’s hair kept growing he might have a mop of hair like Curly used to have. He feels gangly and awkward standing before them, too tall, too pale, too buttoned-up.

“So,” Ryan says.

“So,” Shane agrees.

“I’ll cut right to the chase because we only get one life to live,” Curly says. “I think Shane and I can help you with your virginity problem. If you want. Not that _we_ think it’s a problem, just…”

“I didn’t think _you_ would want—” Ryan starts. “I don’t know what I’m doing.” It’s laughable, really, because Curly’s never made a secret of his general thirst for dudes in general and Ryan in particular, but it’s an interesting angle to play, leaning into the insecurity. Letting himself be talked into it a little.

Shane thinks he knows what Ryan wants, and having a job to do makes him feel less out-of-place himself. He can do a little wooing, if Ryan wants to be hesitant. He can work with that.

He slides onto the bed next to Ryan, completing the messy off-kilter triangle of their legs, grasping out for one of Ryan’s socked feet until the arch of it is under his hands.

“Hey, Ry, no pressure,” he says. “Seriously. But you said it was a burden. I don’t know, maybe we could. I’ve thought about it.”

Ryan looks up quick at that, pulling his eyes from where he’d been picking at the duvet cover.

“You’ve thought about me?”

“Ever since San Diego,” he says quietly, because “ever since the last time” flies in the face of the essential premise at work here. Curly hears, of course, but he doesn’t know what it means—not like Ryan does—and his eyebrows fly together to consider this latest mystery. Shane might explain later or he might not; this might just be for him and Ryan.

“Um, maybe.”

“What do you think, baby? Can I kiss you and we’ll see if there’s something there?”

Shane already knows there’s something there. He already knows what Ryan’s mouth feels like under his own, hot and frantic. He suspects he’ll get less teeth this time around.

“Shane, Jesus, time out,” Ryan says, breaking character for a second to pound the bed with his palm and laugh. “ _Baby_ , that’s fucking—what are you—"

“No, go with that, that’s good.” Curly arranges himself on the bed for optimal viewing. “Tío Curly likes that.”

“Tío Curly, that’s even worse. That is the worst thing I’ve ever heard. I’m into what you’re trying to accomplish here conceptually, but I have some notes on the execution.”  

Now it’s Shane’s turn to laugh himself hoarse at the look of consternation on Ryan’s face. He’s overwhelmed with affection for him, and he thinks Curly’s in the same boat, judging by his rapt half-smile.

A scene, it occurs to Shane, is just a _bit_. It’s just a bit where you fuck at the end. And bits they can do.

“Time in,” Shane says, and before Ryan can say anything more Shane leans in to kiss him.

The first few seconds are one hundred percent Ryan, unfiltered through any lens—strong and sure, teeth and tongue right off the bat, all guns blazing like he could be naked _yesterday_. Then Ryan must remember what he’s meant to be doing, because he lets out a surprised little noise against Shane’s mouth and he goes softer, exploratory, much less certain. More like a virgin might kiss, not that Shane’s got a lot of experience kissing virgins.

Shane pulls back and watches with fierce joy as Ryan puts on the whole routine: big eyes, gulping, passing his hand over his mouth like he’s already overwhelmed just from a kiss.

“Okay, time out again,” Curly says. “First of all, this is exactly how I imagined this trip going when I put it on my vision board. But second and more practically, Ryan, how are we going to know when you’re acting and when you’re not? I don’t wanna, like, pork you into oblivion thinking you’re pretending to be hesitant only to find out later you were _actually_ hesitant.”

Ryan frowns. “I’ll just say time out,” he says finally. “It’s been working so far. I’ll say time out and we can figure it out.”

“I’ll know anyway,” Shane says. “I know him. He’s a good actor, but not that good.”

Ryan makes a face at him, but Shane knows it’s true. He can always feel every shift in Ryan’s many selves, from the person he is most of the time to the person he is on camera to one of his characters like Ricky Goldsworth. You can’t spend this much time with someone, watching him slip in and out of versions of himself like well-worn shoes, and not recognize it later.

“Time in,” Curly says. “Make with the kissing some more, I liked that a lot.”

Shane doesn’t need to be told twice. He slides Ryan down against the bed, tucking Ryan’s head carefully against the pillow, bracing himself above Ryan’s body. Ryan lets himself be brought and arranged; he just looks up at Shane, his eyes still big, mouth parted a little. It’s an arresting image.

“I’m getting old here,” Ryan whispers.

“So impatient,” Shane says. “God forbid you wait for anything in your whole entire life.”

“I’ve been waiting for _this_ , haven’t—"

Shane leans down to kiss Ryan again, cutting him off, and this time he puts his whole body into it. He brackets Ryan’s head with his right arm—but not his left, so Curly can still see. He nudges Ryan’s legs apart so he can press himself down between them in a slow, easy grind.

It’s no time at all before he can feel Ryan getting hard beneath him. No time at all before Ryan starts panting into his mouth, ragged and turned on and confused.

“Shane,” he says. “That’s—"

“Good, right? C’mon, let’s unleash the biceps. Curly was devastated you wouldn’t whip ‘em out for La Llorona.”

Shane scoots back and pulls Ryan up to a sitting position. Curly leans in to peel Ryan’s black t-shirt up his torso, up and over his shoulders and off. He does it with relish, not bothering to hide that he’s been waiting to do it for a very long time, and brings his hands back down to wrap around Ryan’s biceps.

Ryan shivers at the touch, or at the air on his skin, or both.

“Art,” Curly declares, bringing his palms down over Ryan’s pecs to rest on his stomach, just above the waistband of his jeans. “You’re a Greek sculpture. Or—Roman, whatever, I don’t know, I don’t know art.”

“Then how do you know this is art?” Ryan asks, gesturing down at himself, because there’s no version of any character he could play that isn’t a smartass.

“Shush,” Shane says, tweaking a nipple and watching with satisfaction as Ryan shudders. “No one knows the nude male form like Curly.”

“I’m not nude,” Ryan objects, and then Shane’s hands fall to the button of his jeans and he goes very still. “Oh, um. Shit.”

“We don’t have to,” Shane reminds him, because the scene demands it, just as it demands Ryan’s squirrelly faux-hesitation. He brings his hand down to cup Ryan through his jeans, gentle, only enough pressure to be noticed, and grins when Ryan’s hips snap up to meet his hand.

“No, I…please, you can,” Ryan says, all enormous pleading eyes again. Shane likes it so much.

“I don’t know,” Shane says. He traces the bulge in Ryan’s pants with his fingers, following the whole line of him from base to tip through layers of jeans and underwear. “It’s a big step, if you’ve never—”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Shane, take off my fucking pants already!” Ryan snaps. Curly sits back on his heels to cackle into his palm. Ryan grimaces and dives back into character. “Uh. No, it’s…you should, it’s cool. I don’t mind.”

“Well if you’re _sure_ , baby,” Shane says. He deftly unbuttons Ryan’s jeans and peels them down Ryan’s legs, along with his boxer-briefs, leaving him bare and shaking a little on the duvet.

Ryan’s hands twitch like he’s thinking about moving them to cover himself. He’s all the way hard, leaking and eager. There’s a spectacular pink flush creeping all the way down his neck and chest.

“You don’t have to stare.”

“Has anybody else ever seen you like this, Ryan?” Shane strokes his hands down Ryan’s thighs, wanting to hear him say the words. If they’re going to do this ridiculous thing, he’s going to eke out every bit of satisfaction he can.

“No, you’re the first,” Ryan says quietly, squirming a little under his attention, his eyes darting between him and Curly. Shane thinks there’s a twinge of real embarrassment there; obviously it’s nowhere near the first time, but he is perhaps not used to being looked at so _closely_.

“You’re beautiful, _cielo_ ,” Curly says. “Don’t be nervous.”

Before, with Ryan, it was fast—shedding clothes fast, hands moving fast, steam rising up from the shower to obscure things. He couldn’t see, not like he wanted to, and Shane plans to look his fill now.

Shane thinks maybe Ryan’s used to fast, at least when things are new. And the undivided attention of two people is a lot for anyone, even someone with plenty of experience, and you don’t have to be a virgin to be overwhelmed by newness.

“C’mere,” Shane says to Curly, rising up on his knees. Curly meets him in an imperfect arc above Ryan’s body for a kiss. Curly kisses with confidence and good humor, like he does everything else. It feels like _not a big deal_ , in the best way, to be kissing him; a break from kissing Ryan, touching Ryan, which feels impossibly high-stakes every time.

He smells good, up close. He’s wearing some spicy-sweet, androgynous cologne Shane’s been getting whiffs of all day but couldn’t pinpoint the source of until he was inches away from Curly’s pulse point. Curly curls his hand around the back of Shane’s neck and the metal of his rings are cool and grounding.

Underneath them, Ryan makes a shallow, broken noise. They break apart to look down, and Ryan’s got a hand around himself, stroking slowly. His eyes are saucers.

Curly shakes his head in slow disbelief. “ _Me están matando_ ,” he mutters to the air, tilting his head skyward like he’s speaking directly to God.

“Ryan, is it okay if Curly touches you?” Shane asks.

Ryan nods wildly. He’s doing such a good job of nailing the sweet spot between eager and terrified that it almost makes Shane nostalgic for his first time, well over a decade ago. He’d been a freshman in college, she’d been a little older, and Shane remembers that the only thing he’d wanted more than to run out of the room was for her to touch him. He remembers his own fingers itching from wanting to be everywhere at once—wound in her hair, on her back, along the curve of her breasts.

Ryan’s energy is like that most of the time anyway: itchy. Desperate for more, more of everything. Desperate to please. It suits this particular scenario well.

Curly doesn’t need more invitation than that. He leans over to grasp Ryan’s dick in his hand and stroke.

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ,” Ryan gasps, and Shane doesn’t think that’s acting at all. “Oh, fuck.”

“Like a virgin, hey! Touched for the very first time,” Shane sings under his breath just to keep the mood light.

“Are you—was that the _Moulin Rouge version_?” Ryan grits out as Curly strokes a little faster.

“Hey, if you didn’t want Madonna by way of 1890s Paris by way of Jim Broadbent present at the site of your deflowering, you invited the wrong guy to the party.”

Curly spits in his hand, loud and showy, and returns it to Ryan’s dick. It stops Ryan’s laughter cold, the new slickness of it, and his back goes ramrod straight as he bucks up into Curly’s grip.

“You’re both terrible at this,” Curly says. “I don’t know why I thought you could stop bantering for long enough to…okay. Okay. Ryan, how do you want this to go?”

“Hm?”  Ryan’s eyes are unfocused. Shane remembers that glazed-over look, the restless shifting of his hips. He reaches out to get his fingers around Curly’s wrist, stilling him.

“He’s close,” Shane says. If Curly wonders how Shane knows, he doesn’t ask, but he doesn’t move his hand either.

“Well, there are a lot of ways to lose your virginity, right?” Curly asks. “It’s a ridiculous concept, virginity, it’s so hetero. It doesn’t mean anything. I’m asking what you want. I could keep doing this, or there’s other stuff. There’s the _whole enchilada_.”

He throws the full force of his accent into “whole enchilada,” with a waggle of his eyebrows for effect.

Ryan looks up at Curly. He’s a little sweaty now, pink all over, hair a mess. His eyes slide over to Shane and hold his gaze, assessing.

“I like enchiladas,” he says, and Curly lets out a little whoop.

“Now we’re cooking with grease!”

He stands up at once, shucking off his shirt and pants as he goes. It occurs to Shane that he’s known Curly a very long time, and yet he’s never once considered what he might look like without the usual Curly accoutrements—the loud clothes, the bold accessories. He’s somehow no less _Curly_ stripped down, though, rooting through his bag in only his underwear and a silver chain around his neck.

Curly emerges with a bottle of lube and a strip of condoms. He takes a considering look at the condoms and then flicks the whole strip of them Shane’s way, tossing the lube on the bed.

“I know I’m not the virgin here,” Shane says, “but, like. Do we draw straws, or what?”

Curly laughs. “Don’t be stupid. You’re gonna fuck him silly, unless Ryan has other ideas. But somehow I don’t think he does.”

“No, that’s—yeah, that’s good,” Ryan says. He starts in on the button of Shane’s fly, eager now that there’s a semblance of a plan, his hands not steady enough to get it undone the first try. Eventually Shane reaches down to help him, and then wiggles out of his pants and underwear so they’re both naked.

“ _Hola,_ _veraneantes_! My name isCurly, I’ll be your cruise director for this evening!” Curly chirps to the room from his position at the foot of the bed. “Let’s go over a few safety precautions. The emergency exit is to your right. Personal lubricant and prophylactics are to be used at all times. Please don’t lean over the side of the ship to look at the propellers, because as we all learned from _Titanic,_ that that shit can kill you.”

His spiel makes Ryan laugh and relax, which was clearly the goal.

Shane doesn’t want to dive right in, there’s something too clinical about it. If it were a real first time, Ryan’s first time, he’d want to be a little mushy-gushy about it, right? He bends his body back down over Ryan’s, lets them rub together from chest to thighs. He pulls Ryan close and rolls, so he’s on his back and Ryan’s on top.

“Like this,” he says, placing an encouraging hand on Ryan’s lower back to establish an easy rolling rhythm, as if Ryan doesn’t already know what to do.

Ryan bends down to kiss him again, long and hard. He rubs in time with the rhythm Shane’s set, until there’s a bit of wetness between them and Shane’s gasping too and Curly’s breathing heavy at the end of the bed.

“Is that okay?” Ryan asks, and the guilelessness in the question is believable. Ryan’s always been that way, eager for reassurance, responsive to praise. He’d almost certainly been like this, when he was less experienced: _is this right, is this good, do you like it? Tell me you like it._

“It’s perfect,” Shane tells him. “You’re doing so good, Ry. You’re a natural.”

Ryan responds to that, as Shane knew he would. He dips his face into Shane’s neck to press his lips there, kissing from behind his ear to the top of his collarbone. The movement of his hips gets a little more frantic.

“Mercy,” Curly says. “The two of you together are hot like fire. This feels like the culmination of my five-year plan.”

“I need your help with this, Curly,” Shane says, groaning as Ryan applies a bit of teeth to his neck. “I’m not exactly, like, the surest about—”

“Say no more!” Curly says. He grabs the bottle of lube and snaps it open. The sound makes Ryan’s back go rigid, and Shane soothes his hand down the length of Ryan’s spine.

“Okay, just be careful,” he says.

“Honey, I’m _always_ careful. But for you, I’ll throw in a little extra somethin’-somethin’.”

Curly disappears behind Ryan’s body. From his position underneath Ryan, Shane can’t really see what’s happening. It was hard to give this up, a little, but it was important to Shane that Curly feel included. Not that Shane’s had a ton of threesomes in his life, but he doesn’t want to be selfish about it.

He can feel it, the first time Curly touches Ryan, so clearly he almost doesn’t have to imagine it. Ryan’s whole body tenses up against him, his forearms shaking on either side of Shane’s shoulders. He doesn’t have to imagine it, but he chooses to: Curly’s careful fingers rubbing at Ryan’s hole, touching where so few people have touched before—maybe no one? Ryan’s back, arching away from and then into the touch.

“Wait. It doesn’t hurt, right?”

“No, _nene_ , it doesn’t hurt. It’s just some pressure that feels weird, and then it’s bomb. I’ll make it good for you, I promise.”

Shane thinks there are some wires getting crossed here, between the scene and the reality behind it. He doesn’t want to break character if Ryan’s into it, but he also wants to make sure—he wants to be _absolutely_ sure—he has a hunch—

“No, hey, time out. Really, Curly, he’s asking.”

“Snitch,” Ryan mutters into his neck.

“It’s _important_.”

“Oh my god,” Curly says, the realization hitting him in the face. “I’m surrounded by virgins.”

*

**_Curly._ **

“I’m not—”

“Well it isn’t like—"

“Okay, everybody in this room who’s never had a dick up their ass or put a dick up an ass is going to be quiet for like two minutes,” Curly says.

“I’m _not_ a virgin,” Ryan protests, “I just haven’t done this specific—” And then he goes silent, probably because Shane’s kneed him in the ribs.

Curly really should have known. Leave it to Ryan Bergara to hide his real nerves behind fake ones and hope nobody notices. Leave it to Ryan _fucking_ Bergara to try to get fucked for the first time while _pretending_ to fuck for the first time. It’s so meta it’s making Curly’s head spin a little.

It’s buttfuckception.

Curly’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about this a lot. Not, like, this specifically, but having sex with one or both of these dudes has been on his bucket list for a long-ass time. Now that it’s happening, he can already tell it’s going to be a whole chapter in his future Buzzfeed tell-all.

He’ll change the names, obviously, to protect everyone’s privacy. Maybe he’ll even sort of hint that it’s two of the Try Guys, and you’ll never guess which ones!

So he’s not about to give up on it now.

“Okay, here’s the—I’m into this if you are, but we’re in time out for the foreseeable. I have to know how you’re really feeling without the whole _oh-it’s-so-big_ blushing virgin schtick getting in the way, not that I don’t respect your dedication _a_ _tu arte_.”

“Fair,” Ryan mumbles. Curly imagines by the slope of his shoulders that he’s chastened.

“Shane, get up here and learn something,” Curly orders. “It’s like my _tía_ Yoselin always says: if you give a man a prepped ass, he fucks for a day. But if you teach a man to prep, he fucks for a lifetime.”

“Your _aunt_ says that?” Shane asks, but he wiggles out from under Ryan as he’s told.

“Not in those exact words. I think it’s usually about fishing.”

He uncaps the lube again, squirting a liberal amount on his fingers. Shane hovers over his shoulder. Curly can feel the inhale of his breath as he takes in the way Ryan’s laid out face-down ass-up on the bed, legs spread. It really is epically pornographic, and he lets himself take a beat to appreciate it too.

“Is everybody just staring at my asshole?” Ryan asks, turning his head to the side on the pillow so he can be understood.

“Yes,” Curly and Shane say in unison.

“I’ve seen a lot of booties in my day, and trust me, yours is top-tier. Easily in the ninety-fifth percentile of buttholes.” Curly’s trying to be reassuring, but from the way Ryan grunts and sticks his face back in the pillow it’s unclear whether he was successful.

When he’s sure Shane’s paying attention, Curly nudges the tip of his finger in. Ryan squirms around him, shifting from knee to knee, and Curly puts a hand above his tailbone to still him. He slides the rest of the way in, slow and steady and careful, enjoying the slick noises and the little huffing sounds Ryan’s producing.

“Okay down there?”

“Weird,” Ryan says. And then, almost begrudging, “But yeah.”

“One’s usually easy,” Curly tells Shane. “You’ve gotta take your time with two. And more lube, always.”

He pulls back, adds more lube, and slowly stretches for two. The great thing about Ryan is that he’s a spectacularly noisy person, always has been. He works out, he makes noise. He works at his desk, he makes noise. You stick a couple of fingers in him, it turns out he _makes noise_.

“Jeeeeeeeeeesus,” he groans when Curly’s two knuckles deep. “Ah, oh, fuck.”

“Wow,” Shane says, watching Curly scissor his fingers slowly, stretching and massaging as Ryan starts to relax around him. Curly pulls out a little and crooks his fingers, searching for the sweet spot. He can tell he’s found it when Ryan cries out again, flailing and slipping down, his knees coming out from under him until Curly hauls him back up with his free arm.

“That’s the reaction you want,” Curly says. “Sometimes two’s enough, but with what you’re packing, I’d say three.” He sneaks another look between Shane’s legs. Shane goes pink. Ryan snickers into his forearms.

Curly pulls his fingers out with a slick wet noise. They both watch in fascination as Ryan’s hole clenches around nothing.

“Or else…” He leans in, just for the hell of it, and licks around the rim and then in.

He mostly does it just to hear Ryan’s surprised, hoarse yell and the catch of Shane’s breath, both of which are extremely fun. Half the fun of sleeping with men who usually sleep with women is that they’re often—not always, but _often_ —caught supremely off-guard when you eat them out.

But it’s so addictive he keeps at it. Ryan’s thighs start shaking almost immediately with the effort of pushing back against Curly’s mouth, and Shane’s hand is around his dick like he can’t even help himself, and it’s all very rewarding. Curly lets himself get into it a bit, until Ryan’s loose and wet and worked-open and _ready_.

He just wants Ryan to get the full red-carpet treatment. If you’re going to do a thing, you might as well really do it right, and Curly’s not a man to half-ass an ass. Eventually, though, he pulls back.

“Coach Curly, tapping out. Next stop, penetration station.”

Ryan wheezes for a minute, caught between laughing and gasping. “It’s not Schoolhouse Rock. Jesus Christ.”

“Penetration station!” Shane warbles to the tune of “Conjunction Junction.” “What’s your—uh. Fornication? Lubrication?”

“I need new friends,” Ryan grumbles.

“Listen, _vato_ , I just ate your ass for a full ten minutes,” Curly says, giving him a spank as he slides to the side to make room for Shane. “Not many people have friends that good. Now, I feel like somebody said something about a deep dicking?”

Curly can’t deny that this is the part he’s really been waiting for. Participating is fun, of course, but he dies to see the two of them together like this, the quiet vulnerability that takes over when he gets out of the way and lets things play out. He doesn’t know what’s happened between them in the past or what might in the future, but there’s something undeniably exciting about watching two people on the brink, feeling each other out.

He likes to think that’s his role in this. To meddle, but just enough. To teach a little, where it’s needed. To validate, when someone is shy or unsure. To _arrange_.

He doesn’t feel superfluous. He feels privileged.

Shane might not know exactly what to do, mechanically, but his instincts are spot on. His instincts for Ryan are right where they need to be. Curly watches as he turns Ryan over, onto his back, so they can look at each other again. There’s unmistakable tenderness there, and humor, and some sort of easy shorthand language between them that Curly isn’t yet fluent in.

Shane mutters something into Ryan’s ear that Curly can’t hear, and Ryan throws his head back against the pillow to laugh, a flash of white teeth and chipmunk cheeks as he thwaps Shane on the shoulder without any real muscle behind it.

“I think maybe, um,” Ryan starts, looking to Curly for the okay. “I think maybe time in?”

“Time in,” Shane agrees.

Curly shrugs. It’s fine with him; it’s not like the scenario they’d been playing at is so different from the truth anyway.

It’s an interesting choice, though. It strikes Curly that it’s almost like they need permission to treat this as special. Like they need an excuse to let themselves be careful with each other, to drop the bickering for a while and allow something less prickly and guarded to work its way between them.

Maybe it’s unfinished business, what he’s seeing. Maybe it’s a do-over. Curly doesn’t know.

Shane’s pressing kisses all over Ryan’s neck, his chest, his torso. He’s reaching between Ryan’s legs, grazing his dick and balls and then further back, touching where he’s open and still wet from lube and Curly’s mouth.

“Did you like that?” he asks Ryan. “What Curly showed you? Did it feel good?”

It’s impossible to see from this angle, but from the way Ryan’s body stills, Curly thinks Shane must have slid a finger or two in. His fingers would be bigger than Curly’s, longer, and Curly palms his dick through his briefs picturing it.

“It felt—yeah. I didn’t know, um. I didn’t know people actually did that. It was really good. I almost…I could have come just from that, probably. Which is humiliating.”

Shane laughs, delighted, and it doesn’t seem put-on at all. “No it’s not, it’s great. We’ll try that some time. Maybe in our triumphant return to the shower.”

Curly makes a note of that; another reference he doesn’t get. There’s a story there that he wants to hear about later. Whatever it means, it makes Ryan whine and grind down on Shane’s fingers.

“Ready if you are, big guy.”

It takes them a couple of minutes and a lot more lube to settle in and negotiate a good angle, but Curly doesn’t want to intervene, not now. He’ll tap back in eventually, but this is all them. He scoots out of his briefs and lies on his side to watch, cock in hand. It’s like the very best porn he’s ever seen, created for him specifically; one where everyone’s cute and earnest and smiling, where the guys make each other laugh before they make each other come.

He knows it’s nobody’s first time here, not really, but still: everybody’s first should be like this. Everybody should get to feel like this.

Finally they figure it out. Shane looks down, braced carefully as he is above Ryan, for the final go-ahead.

“You’ll tell me to stop if—”

“No shit,” Ryan says, sliding out of character for a moment. “Just go slow. Sorry to be a cliché, but you’re a big dude.”

“The sweet talk on this guy,” Shane says, off-hand, to Curly.

No matter what they say, it’s still feeling very _time-out_ to Curly. Most of the scene’s fallen away, the big-eyed gasping insincerity, the bravado of showing a newbie the ropes. They’ve taken what they wanted from it—the ability to say things, honestly, about what they want and feel—and let the rest go.

“One small push for Shanes, one large leap for mankind,” Curly says, just to make the skin around Shane’s eyes crinkle up in a smile as he starts to push in.

Ryan holds his breath. The whole room holds its collective breath. Curly knows about how long this should take when someone’s really taking his time, and he starts to silently count backwards from twenty. He can’t get enough of their faces, of the rapt, cracked-open look on Shane’s, of the surprised slack O of Ryan’s mouth.

Curly knows that look. It’s the look of someone feeling something new for the first time and loving it, and being surprised to love it. He feels lucky, again, to be a part of it.

When Shane’s as deep as he can get— _real_ deep, Curly bets—he stops moving and takes stock. He checks in, hands on Ryan’s jaw, in his hair.

“How are you feeling, Ryan?” Curly asks.

“Bored,” Ryan croaks. “Honestly I could go for some Lakers highlights, maybe a cheeseburger—”

“Ry—”

“No, I’m. It’s great, you’re great. You can move, if you want.”

“Curly, can you see okay?” Shane asks, and seriously, what a sweetheart. To be thinking about Curly now, when he’s just been given the okay to let loose. His shoulders and upper back are tense with self-restraint.

“I’ve got the second-best seat in the house.”

And then Shane starts to move, and Ryan lets out a huge rattling breath, and they all three of them lose the capacity for jokes for a while, and that’s pretty good too. Not everything has to be funny.

*

**_Ryan_.**

He’s probably supposed to be saying something.

He should be leaning into the virgin thing, telling Shane how good it feels, how deep he is, _something_. Guys like that, right? He’s a guy and he likes that shit. But Ryan can’t summon up the energy to do anything more than what he’s currently doing, which is taking it like a fuckin’ champ and letting a babble of random noises fall from his lips whenever the urge strikes him.

Shane doesn’t seem to mind.

This just isn’t how he thought his night would go. He’s feeling introspective about the whole thing already, even while he’s still in the middle of it. Surely this is one of the weirder things that’s ever happened to anyone.

Shane adjusts Ryan’s hips, pulls him close for an even deeper angle, and Ryan wails on the next thrust.

“I can feel you thinking,” he says.

“So you’re gonna, what, fuck the thoughts out of me?” Ryan shoots back.

“Why, would that work?”

It’s a cliché, but he can’t stop looking at Shane’s _face_. He’s so intent, so focused. It isn’t surprising, given all he knows about Shane, but it is intimidating to be on the receiving end of that. Ryan just doesn’t want to be a disappointment.

He must say that out loud, or something to that effect, because Shane stills.

“Don’t be a dumbass, you never could be,” he says. He pushes hair out of Ryan’s face, wraps a big hand loosely around his neck. Ryan feels vulnerable. He feels as safe as houses.

“Can I ride you?”

He feels like he should be working harder.

“ _Can I ride you_ , he says,” Curly narrates from the other side of the bed. “Jesus take the wheel. Like a man’s going to say no.”      

“Of course you can,” Shane says. He chucks his hand under Ryan’s chin and pulls out gently. They rearrange again until Shane’s half seated, his back propped against pillows and the headboard. Ryan swings a leg over and he slides down, down, down. It feels like a long way to go, the stretch is more, the pressure—

Oh yes. That’s more like it.

Ryan likes it right away. He likes the burn of it, the strain. He likes the near-immediate warmth in his thigh muscles at the unfamiliar motion as he slides experimentally down and then up and then down again. He likes putting in the work.

He _especially_ likes the look on Shane’s face now, the focus blown clean away into surprise and awe and sheer wanting.

“Fucking wow,” Shane says. He gets a hand on Ryan’s side to help set an even pace, and with his other he cups the back of Ryan’s neck and pulls their foreheads together. “Ryan, I can’t last like this.”

“You hear that, Curly?” Ryan rasps out. “My ass is too good. Write that down.”

“It’s not like I’m gonna forget it, honey.”

Ryan’s hurtling toward the finish too, he can feel it. The pressure’s building in his belly, nudging him on faster and harder. If someone would get a hand on his dick he’d be coming in a minute, maybe less, but he’s also not sure he’s ready for it to be over.

“No, seriously, guys,” Shane cuts in. He reaches down with his other hand to still Ryan’s hips, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. Ryan wriggles in place, eager to move again and enjoying how the motion makes Shane close his eyes slowly, like a cat.

“Spin around, Ryan, I’ve got you,” Curly says, businesslike, going up on his knees. He holds his arms out for Ryan to grab and brace himself against as he does a 180-degree turn, still seated, until his back is against Shane’s chest.

It’s the first good look Ryan’s gotten of the room in a while. Shane’s arm is across his chest to keep him balanced, his big hand resting on Ryan’s stomach. Curly’s eyes are glinting in the soft lamplight of the room. He’s gotten naked at some point in the last few minutes, when Ryan was too busy getting lovingly railed to notice.  

“Now move,” Curly orders. “And don’t mind little old me.”

And then he slides down Ryan’s body, mouthing at his pecs, kissing down his stomach. As Ryan starts to ride again, his mouth finds Ryan’s dick and Ryan understands, all at once, like a lightning strike, why people have threesomes.

Curly sinks all the way down. He doesn’t move, he just lets Ryan do the work of fucking down onto Shane’s cock and then up into his mouth. He looks up at Ryan, his eyes wide and a little damp from the _fucking dick in his throat_ , and Ryan makes a strangled noise that gets Shane’s attention.

It’s sensation from all sides. It’s almost too much. Ryan’s caught between one urgent, intense feeling and another. He’s not sure he could stop moving if he tried, seeking pressure and heat, buffeted between a rock and a hard place in the best way.

Shane hooks his chin over Ryan’s shoulder to watch. “Fuck,” he punches out, which is a pretty neat summary of how Ryan feels about it too. He reaches around Ryan with one hand to grab Curly’s hair and tug him in—the secret ambition of every man who’s ever slept with Curly, Ryan is sure.

“How is it, Ryan?” Shane asks. He laughs wryly into Ryan’s shoulder. “This, your first ever blowjob.”

Right. The—thing. He’d forgotten they were even doing that.

“It’s fucking, it’s so good, Shane.” He wipes sweat from his face with his forearm. “It’s all so, god.”

He’s unbelievably close to coming, which if course was Curly’s purpose: to catch him up to Shane, so Shane could come without feeling bad about leaving Ryan hanging. He has so effortlessly facilitated this whole thing, like a magical threesome sprite.

“You can come,” Shane says. “I want to see you, I want you to come for us.”

That’s what does it, somehow. The _us_. And the way Curly’s looking up at him, and Shane’s hand slung across his chest, and his mouth pressed to the meat of Ryan’s bare shoulder.

“Curly, I’m gonna—” he warns, and Curly hums happily like he wants nothing more on this earth than for Ryan to come down his throat.

Ryan obliges.

He comes so hard, in fact, that he just sort of…peaces out of his own body for a little bit.

When he comes back, Curly’s pulled off. He’s dabbing delicately at the edges of his mouth, looking about as pleased with himself as any man has a right to do, his other hand working fast between his own legs.

“Come on, Shane, baby,” he says. Shane’s fucking up into Ryan haphazardly, unevenly, too close to keep to a rhythm. Ryan feels bad that he lacks the wherewithal to help either of them get there.

“God, Ryan,” Shane manages, and then he’s pulling Ryan down to get as deep as he can, biting down on his shoulder, and coming too.

*

They’re all quiet for a few minutes in the afterglow, their breathing slowing to normal. Eventually Ryan becomes aware that his torso is sticky with come. Shane pulls out of him with a hiss and slips into the bathroom to deal with disposing of the condom and the resultant clean-up, giving Ryan’s messy riot of hair a comb-through with his fingers as he goes.

“Did you come _on_ me?” Ryan asks Curly, who’s flopped over on the bed again.

“Oh most definitely.”

Curly smiles up at him sunnily. Ryan flops down next to him, half-heartedly swiping at the streaks on his chest, finding that the sheer joy on Curly’s face makes it impossible to be annoyed. The bed moves again as Shane returns to lie down on Ryan’s other side. He’s bracketed between them again, warm and cozy enough to drift off to sleep.

“So tell me about San Diego,” Curly says.

Ryan can feel Shane looking at him, like it’s his call. He sees no reason to keep it to himself, not now. Curly’s a part of it now, and he’s earned the right to know what he waltzed in on.

“We had sex,” Ryan says.

“I knew it!” Curly crows, louder than the space of the room requires. “Sorry. I did know it, though. You just give off an aura, it’s a very specific energy. Horny, but embarrassed about it. Tell me more so I can pleasure myself recalling your first-time fumblings later.”

“What, _these_ first-time fumblings weren’t enough jerk-off material for you?”

“I’m greedy.”                                                                                        

“It was like tonight, I guess. We finished filming early, and it was a weird shoot so we were sort of hyper. We got drunk and went for a swim.”

“And you just fell on each other’s dicks? What a dream. This is exactly how I always imagined your filming trips going, by the way.”

“We were in the shower,” Shane says, remembering. His voice is scratchy with his nearness to sleep. “Some thin premise about saving water, it was during the drought last year. Ryan’s idea. Sometimes he gets in a mood and you don’t know what he’ll—well. You’ve seen it. And then he just went for it.”

Curly cackles gleefully.

“And then we didn’t talk about it the next morning, and months passed, and it was just this thing we never dealt with,” Ryan says. “Until now, I guess.”

“I’m a healer,” Curly says. He brings his hands together, lacing the fingers of his left hand between the fingers of his right. “I’ve healed your schism with my high-concept roleplay shenanigans. How was the deflowering, by the way?”

“I’ve definitely been plucked,” Ryan says. “Thanks for making a man out of me, I guess.”

“You’re so welcome.” Shane presses a kiss to Ryan’s shoulder, right where he bit down before, smack-dab on the bruise, and it’s the last thing Ryan feels before he falls asleep.

*

Ryan is up early, very early, before the sun.

With his very first waking thought he remembers the last time: waking up on his bed alone, looking across the room, watching Shane crack his eyes open and shift his feet where they dangled over his own bed.

They’d made eye contact and Ryan had known, in that moment, that it wouldn’t be as easy as it had felt the night before.

This time is the exact opposite of that. Ryan wakes up in a cocoon of warmth and closeness, Shane to the left of him and Curly to his right, no distance to speak of, and it’s exquisitely _easy_. It could have been this way the first time if he’d just tried harder, if he’d been more honest. If he hadn’t backpedaled as fast as humanly possible away from it.

The act of waking must wake Shane up too, because he murmurs and stretches against Ryan’s side, poking the toes of one foot into Ryan’s shin.

“Gross, it’s early,” Shane mumbles. And then he must remember where they are and why, because he does a double-take. “Shit. How do you feel?”

Ryan considers. He feels pretty good. In need of a shower and a giant greasy breakfast, but good.

“I feel like we’ve made it through the wilderness,” he says. “Somehow we’ve made it through.”

Shane stifles his snicker into the pillow, trying his best to let Curly sleep.

“Do you feel shiny and new? Has my love thawed out what was scared and cold?”

“Do you know the whole fuckin’ song, man?”

Ryan already knows the answer, as surely as he knows he’ll never hear the damn song again without flashing back to this moment and becoming embarrassingly nostalgic. His bros will never let him live it down.

“Was I or was I not raised on endless episodes of Pop-Up Video on VH1, Ryan? What a stupid question. Of course I do.”

Ryan doesn’t know why he thought it would have to be different now. It feels exactly the same. It feels just right.

“Listening to the two of you post-coitally bicker in Madonna lyrics is the gayest moment of my entire gay life,” Curly grumbles from Ryan’s other side. “And if someone doesn’t put _huevos rancheros_ directly in my mouth in the next half an hour I’m canceling your show myself. I’ll tell HR about your unconventional team-building activities.”

Yeah. They’re good.

*

**Author's Note:**

> guess who's back, back again (na na na)


End file.
